Push is on to end at-large elections for ABC, Bellflower school boards

ABC Unified encompasses all or part of six cities, but every one of the school district's board members resides in Cerritos.

A group of area residents is hoping to change that and other perceived inequities of representation there and in the neighboring Bellflower Unified School District.

The residents are petitioning district officials to switch from an at-large voting system to a district voting system to better represent the population.

The push reflects a growing trend as school districts, college boards and cities across the state scramble to switch from at-large voting to electoral districts in response to public pressure and threats of lawsuits under the California Voting Rights Act.

In November, four out of five incumbents for the Cerritos College Board of Trustees were swept out of office under a new trustee district voting system. The change brought a historic face of diversity to the Norwalk-based board with three Latina representatives.

Cerritos activist Charles Ara hopes to duplicate that change in local school boards.

Ara, who has formed an independent school district reorganization committee and is circulating a petition to gather support, said the ABC Unified and Bellflower school boards do not fairly represent the area's large Latino population, nor do they reflect the cities they serve.

ABC Unified represents the cities of Cerritos, Hawaiian Gardens, Artesia and portions of Lakewood, Norwalk and Long Beach. However, Ara noted that all seven school board members reside in Cerritos.

"In order for us to have fairness and equality, that needs to be broken up," Ara said.

In Bellflower Unified, an area with a large Latino population -- its base in the city of Bellflower is over 50 percent Latino -- just one school board member is Latino, Ara said. More than 60 percent of students in the district are Latino, according to state statistics.

Bellflower Unified Superintendent Brian Jacobs said in an email to the Press-Telegram that the district has discussed the issue of switching to district-area voting and has prepared a study for the California School Boards Association.

ABC Unified School Board President Celia Spitzer said the district in 2011 conducted an extensive demographic study and determined that the voting system wasn't polarized along racial or ethnic lines.

"It was an extensive analysis looking back all the way to 1981, and the conclusion was that there was no evidence of racially polarized voting," Spitzer said, adding that the district does not plan to change its voting system.

While ABC Unified does have a disproportionate number of Cerritos residents on the school board, Spitzer, a board member since 1999, noted that the California Voting Rights Act is designed for racial discrimination and does not address voting disparities along geographic lines.

"The issue doesn't really apply here in ABC Unified," she said.

Signed by Gov. Gray Davis in 2002, the California Voting Rights Act prohibits local governments from holding at-large elections -- in which the whole community elects members of a governing body -- if that system impairs the ability of minority groups to elect candidates of their choice.

School boards and cities can be found liable if lawyers can prove the voting is polarized along racial lines.

The law gained strength in 2007 when the California Supreme Court deemed it constitutional following a claim from the city of Modesto that the act inherently favored people of color.

Armed with 2010 census data, lawyers across the state have targeted governing bodies who may be in violation, essentially changing the face of local elections.

The majority of California school boards use at-large voting, as do many small cities. In district elections, candidates can run only in the district in which they live.

Since 2009, 70 school boards that have applied with the state Board of Education to switch to elections by district, according to California Watch, an independent center for investigative reporting. Most of them are located in Fresno, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties.

Southern California cities and school boards that have voted to make the switch include the city of Compton, Pasadena Unified and Downey Unified.

Ara said he'll continue to ask the Los Angeles County Board of Education to review the districts for evidence of violations under the California Voting Rights Act.

In 2011, Ara was one of three Latino residents who filed a lawsuit against Cerritos College stating the Board of Trustees was in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The college in December 2011 adopted a new plan to create seven trustee areas, and the lawsuit was later settled out of court.

The two other plaintiffs, Carmen Avalos and Leonard Zuniga, ran for seats on the board in November. Zuniga lost to incumbent Robert Arthur, while Avalos won in her newly designated district.

School board diversity

The ethnic breakdown of the cities served by Bellflower Unified and ABC Unified school districts: